Thanksgiving: Week of November 21-25

The theme this week was Thanksgiving and beginning primary sources for 4th and 5th grades.

Kindergarten: No classes due to holiday.

1st grade:  Read Over the River: A Turkey's Tale by Derek Anderson.

2nd grade:  Read Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey and looked around http://www.pilkey.com, where the author/illustrator has sketches and shows the drawing process for this book.

3rd grade:  Read Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey and looked around http://www.pilkey.com, where the author/illustrator has sketches and shows the drawing process for this book.

4th grade:  Read Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving by Laurie Halse Anderson.  This book introduces Sarah Hale, who wrote letters to presidents and governors, trying to get Thanksgiving named as a national holiday.  Abraham Lincoln finally agreed, after 38 years of her persistence.  We move from this book to the Library of Congress website, where we look at Sarah's letter to Lincoln and discuss primary sources.  We will continue on this topic for a few weeks.

5th grade:  Check out.

6th grade:  Check out.

Book Fair

After our one night Book Fair in connection with the PTA Movie Night, I was exhausted but excited to see so many kids getting good books to read.  We also surpassed our fundraising goal by selling over $4000 worth of books in just under six hours.  Up to 40% of those sales will return to the library in the form of Scholastic books and money to purchase other titles.  Thank you for your support, the students and I appreciate it!

If you didn't have a chance to attend the Movie Night/Book Fair, there is a new Online Book Fair this year, open until the Monday after Thanksgiving, if you want to do some shopping over the vacation.  Books purchased through the Online Book Fair count towards our total and as part of the 30-40% return to the library.  Books purchased online will be delivered to Ridgecrest for no shipping charges and distributed to students before Winter Break begins.

Thank you for supporting reading at home and at school!

SRI & Thanksgiving: Week of November 14-18

The theme this week was Thanksgiving for the primary grades, SRI testing for the intermediate grades.  The increased testing that classroom teachers are asked to do also impacts teaching in the library.  I give several assessments throughout the year, including the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), STAR (which gives students their AR zone, not used by every class), and TRAILS (Tools for Real-time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills, given by me to inform my own instruction).  Assessment does give us information to drive instruction and focus on areas of need, but sometimes it seems that with so much testing, we struggle to find enough time to teach the skills needed to be successful on tests.

Kindergarten:  Thanksgiving books are so much fun to read, they are warm and fuzzy and almost always make me hungry.  Kindergarten students heard Over the River: A Turkey's Tale by Derek Anderson, based on the song with another story told through the illustrations.  Kindergarten students are the perfect audience for books like this because many are not reading yet, so they rely on pictures to tell them the story.  They notice when the illustrations share a story not included in the text, more so than older readers who read the text and pay less attention to illustration.  Kindergarteners love to show you something you might have missed in an illustration.  Jan Brett is another author and illustrator who includes subtexts in her illustrations, and students can spend long periods of time poring over her books.  Jan Brett's books include The Mitten, The Hat, The Three Snow Bears, Hedgie's Surprise, Trouble with Trolls, and Gingerbread Baby, among many others.

1st grade:  In 1st grade classes this week, we read Thanksgiving books, includig I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie, which is a funny take on I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.  It's familiar to them, and just as outrageous.

2nd grade:  Some 2nd grade students took their first turn at the SRI this week.  We start 2nd graders taking this now because it can take up to three times to get used to taking the test online (logging in with a username and password is difficult and takes practice).  After the third time, we feel we have an accurate score.  The SRI tests for reading comprehension, giving students a passage from a book and then asking them a multiple-choice comprehension question.

One 2nd grade class will test after Thanksgiving, so we read The Sniffles for Bear by Bonny Becker and Kady MacDonald Denton, part of the series that started with the Washington Children's Choice Picture Book nominee A Visitor for Bear.  I love the language used in the books, it is not limited to words known by primary students.  It is realistic and difficult, and prompts them to use context clues to figure out meanings.  If they aren't sure what a word means, they always ask.  Examples of fabulous new vocabulary words we discovered include:  decency, "gravity of the situation", mournful and "last flicker before the dark."  Bear is convinced he will not survive his illness, but as usual, his over-exaggeration of everything and Mouse's never-ending patience with him is hilarious to the listener and reader.

I found a nice blog post interview with the illustrator of the Bear books, Kady MacDonald Denton, including rough sketches of some Bear illustrations and other books she has illustrated.

3rd grade:  Students took the SRI.

4th grade:  Students took the SRI.

5th grade:  Students took the SRI.

6th grade:  Students took the SRI.

Placing holds on books

As of this week there is a new feature in the Ridgecrest Library OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) allowing users to place holds on books online.  Students have been filling out green slips for years, but this involves just one click and filling out a name.

How to place a hold online:

1. Go to the Ridgecrest Library catalog website.
2. Search for a book you want to check out and read.
3. To the right of the book, look to see if the book is available.  If there are 0 copies Available, you can place a hold.  If there are copies available, please look for them on the library shelves.  Holdings means how many copies the library owns, not how many are already on hold.
4. To place a hold click on the Request Hold link.
5. Enter your name (required).  No other information is necessary.
6. Your hold request will be sent by email to Ms. Freeman.  The book will be given to your teacher or brought to you in your classroom as soon as it is available.

Book Fair preview: Week of November 7-11

The theme this week was the preview of the Scholastic Book Fair, which will take place next Friday, November 18th, from 3PM through the end of The Wizard of Oz, which is the movie showing during Movie Night starting at 6:30PM.

All classes viewed the Book Fair preview video, which includes interviews with authors and illustrators, including Nick Bruel, the writer and illustrator of the Bad Kitty books, Megan McDonald, the writer of the Judy Moody books, and Daniel Angelberger, the author and illustrator of the popular Origami Yoda books.  I enjoy discussing the interviews with students and showing them the real people behind the books they love.

Pumpkins, good books, information literacy: Week of October 31-November 4

The themes this week included pumpkins, finding good books, and finding out what students know about information literacy skills.

Kindergarten:  I read the Kindergarten students Mousekin's Golden House to support their field trip to the pumpkin farm.  It concerns a mouse who finds a discarded jack o'lantern in the woods and decides to make it his winter home.  The language is engaging for the listeners and it connects with the idea we discussed last week in Pumpkin Circle about the life cycle of a pumpkin.

1st grade:  Read Superdog by Mark and Caralyn Buehner, focusing on the ideas of bullying and how to respect and forgive others.  This theme connects with our Ridgecrest Way themes of respect, responsibility, kindness and safety.

2nd grade:  We read Pumpkin Cat in honor of the season.

3rd grade:  We continued our individual practice in the lab about library shelf order, and I noted down how many games students completed at 100% as an assessment.  All but two students completed at least two games, which was my goal.

4th grade:  I gave the 4th grade classes the TRAILS (Tool for Real-Time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) assessment to help me focus on specific areas of need over the course of the 35 library classes they have over the school year.  There are five main topic areas tested, including developing topics, identifying sources, developing and using search strategies, evaluating sources, and using information responsibly and ethically.  I will devise my class lesson plans and collaboration with teachers based on the results of this assessment.

5th grade:  We had a long checkout period today to allow me to connect with more students individually. Both 5th grade classes come to the library at the same time, so managing to connect with 60 students in 30 minutes is difficult, if not impossible.

6th grade:  I booktalked titles from the classics genre this week to the 6th grade classes.  The 6th grade HiCap class has it as one of their choices for their monthly projects, and all the 6th grade students gravitate towards the latest books, rather than classics.  I discussed the definition of a classic with the students and showed them some titles, including books by Twain, Kipling, Stevenson, Alcott, Travers, etc.

Finding good books & Halloween: Week of October 24-28

The theme this week was a continuation of how to find a good book, with some Halloween thrown in for fun.

Kindergarten:  I showed the Kindergarten classes the video for the book Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson, narrated by Danny Glover with music by George Winston.  It is a lovely book about the circle of life of a pumpkin, from seed to plant to fruit and back to seed again.  The music is lively and the video is engaging for all students.  The Kindergarten classes are going to the pumpkin patch on Monday, October 31, so this ties in with their curriculum.

1st grade:  Continuing the theme of how to find a good book, I read the 1st grade classes Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians by Jackie Mims Hopkins.  Goldie Socks finds herself in the bears' house while they are out doing their jobs as libearians, and she finds books that are too big, too hard, too easy, too little, until she finds some that are just right.  The book includes the Five Finger Rule, which I teach students to help them find a good book.  Choose a book and turn to the first page, read it to yourself or out loud and every time you come to a word you don't know, put up a finger.  At the end of the page if you have zero fingers or one finger up it may be too easy, but is still a fun book to check out; two or three fingers means it is just right and you'll be challenging yourself to be a better reader; four or five fingers mean it will be difficult to understand but it might be a good book to read with someone at home.

2nd grade:  We read Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians as well, and talked about choosing AR books that were in our zone as another way to find a "just right" book.

3rd grade:  We played the Order in the Library online games again, but instead of doing it as a whole class, we went into the computer lab and students practiced alphabetizing books individually.  I challenged students to get through at least two games before we finished in the lab and went to check out books.

4th grade:  I purchased some new fractured fairytales and folktales at the end of last year and I've been waiting to share Cinderella Skeleton with a class ever since.  It is a wonderful version of the story with appropriately creepy Tim Burton-like pictures, with Robert San Souci's well-written verse sharing the story of Cinderella Skeleton and her wish to go to the Halloween Ball, where she meets her Prince Charming and loses not her shoe, but her whole foot while running away.

5th grade:  We looked at more online book-finding tools today, specifically Literature Map and Your Next Read.  These websites use data from users and other sources to connect readers to books related to the books and authors they are already reading.

6th grade:  We also looked at more online book-finding tools today, specifically Literature Map and Your Next Read.  These websites use data from users and other sources to connect readers to books related to the books and authors they are already reading.

Finding good books: Week of October 17-21

The theme this week was how to find a good book.  With the primary grades, this generally means discussing what a "good fit" or "just right" book is for them, and how to find those kinds of books.  With the intermediate grades, I introduce some tools they can use independently to find books that appeal to them.

Kindergarten: This is our first week to check out a library book!  After several classes discussing book care, how to choose a good book, and the procedures to use in the library (how to check out, where to read, where to line up, when to bring books back, etc.), we are ready!

1st grade:  We read Mo Willems books (writer of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and Leonardo the Terrible Monster) and Ella the Elegant Elephant by Steven and Carmela D'Amico (local author and illustrator) as examples of what might be a "good fit" book for 1st graders.

2nd grade:  We read Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt, using the document camera to look at the wonderful detail in her illustrations.

3rd grade:  The focus for 3rd grade for the next few week is how students can find books on the shelves, so we began with a whole-class shelf order game on the interactive whiteboard.  We dragged books into the correct order and discussed how books are organized in the Everybody, Fiction, and Nonfiction sections.  This will lead to actual practice finding books on the shelf.  Students can practice this at home using the same online games: Order in the Library.

4th grade:  We discussed the Global Reading Challenge during the 4th grade classes, since this is the first year they are eligible and it is new to many of them.  All 4th and 5th graders are encouraged to join one of our seven teams, read at least two of the ten books determined by the KCLS childrens librarians, and meet to discuss the books once a week during lunch recess.  For more information, visit the GRC website.

5th grade:  I showed the 5th grade classes how to use Lexile.com to search for books in genres that interest them that are at the level of the Lexile score each student earned on our Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) test earlier this fall.  Students who read books near their Lexile level are more likely to comprehend what they are reading.

6th grade:  I also showed the 5th grade classes how to use Lexile.com to search for books in genres that interest them that are at the level of the Lexile score each student earned on our Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) test earlier this fall.  Students who read books near their Lexile level are more likely to comprehend what they are reading.

Global Reading Challenge 2011-12

The King County Library System's Global Reading Challenge provides books and support for teams of 4th and 5th graders from Ridgecrest.  Ten books are chosen by the KCLS librarians to be read by the students in preparation for questions in a Battle of the Books style competition.

Fourth and fifth grade classrooms are hearing about the GRC this week. Any student in those grades is eligible to participate.  We want a variety of reading levels and interests, and the book list reflects a variety of reading levels and genres.

The requirements for students are:

• students are willing to read at least two of the ten books
• students will attend bi-weekly team meetings at lunchtime with Ms. Freeman and Mrs. Therriault in the library
• students will be prepared to work with their team to read and practice questions.

Last year we had six teams with 40 students participating.  My hope is that we will exceed that number (we can have up to 7 teams with 49 students participating).

The book list this year is fabulous, and you can see the books and read more about the GRC on the KCLS GRC webpage.

Return to blogging

After more than two years of trying out different ways to communicate with families and community members, I have returned to this blog and hope to update it at least twice a week.  I will share what we are learning and reading in library each week for each grade level and program, and also some favorite books or technology tips.